Discipline

Here's my birthday once again and here's the moment to take a look at my portfolio over time.

More precisely, heres the growth of my portfolio from mid-may to mid-may, since 2009.

2009: year 0
2010: 75%
2011: 41%
2012: 38%
2013: 31%
2014: 50%
2015: 54%
2016: -8%
2017: 22%
2018: 19%
2019: 32%
2020: 16%

Compound annual growth of the portfolio from may 2009 to may 2020: 34%.

In other words, my portfolio grew by 22 times since 2009.

The important thing to notice is that this growth is in absolute numbers. For instance, if the value of my portfolio was 1000$ in 2009 and I added 750$ to the portfolio on may 15th 2010 with a 0% increase of value of my shares during the year, I would set 75% as an increase of the value of my portfolio. So, that tracking doesn't show the performance of my portfolio at all. And it doesn't matter that much for this post, because that's not my goal to write about performance.

To me, the most important thing, just after finding an approach that works, is to have the discipline to invest more money on your portfolio, every month and every year. That means saving as much money as you can (if you're able to save 50% of your net income, that will make a huge difference over time).

Since 2018, I write a post around may 16th which is titled "Discipline". Because I think that discipline is the recipe of my success, if I can qualify my performance as a "success". I've bought a lot of crappy stocks, I've done some terrible mistakes. But my savings did a substantial difference in the end.

If you're in your 20's or your 30's, go for 10 frugal years and see the impact 10 years later. Your frugality will bring you a freedom that few people have around you. And you won't have that much to care about saving any more money.

That's very important to be free. Perhaps you don't understand that when you're 25, but when you're 40, you must be pretty stupid if you don't see the priceless value of getting rid of any financial stress.